Weird but Normal

by Mia Mercado

  There is a tester version of everything. Their goal is to make you sample so many lotions, your hands will be too moisturized to grip the door handle and you can’t leave. I know women who have spent their entire twenties in a Bath & Body Works. I choose to pay my respects to the twelve hundred different body mists with a hearty spritz of each one. My goal is to leave this store smelling like a baked good you want to hump.

  Like any good trip, I black out and end up with $75 worth of soap cradled in my arms. Some may say that’s excessive, but only if you have a healthy understanding of fiscal responsibility. Before you get too judgmental, I do have a coupon. I’m on their mailing list because the subject lines of their email deals are the kind of passive-aggression I am here for. My inbox is littered with messages like “Seriously. Last chance for $10 body mist” and “We have your family. Buy our foot cream.”

  I leave with three more coupons than I came with because Bath & Body Works takes a human centipede approach to marketing. They feed you coupons so you shit out money and buy sugar scrubs to get more coupons, so you shit out more money for more sugar scrubs. I plan to repeat this cycle until I die or my body just becomes a skin tube of shower gel. I’m honestly not sure which will come first.

  As I leave, I try not to become distracted by a candle display I’m convinced only revealed itself as I was attempting to exit. I dodge through a gauntlet of cookie-scented air fresheners for a car. You know, where every human bakes all their cookies. After donkey-kicking through a thick haze of perfume and room spray, I finally find myself on the outside of the store. I get to my car and realize I forgot to buy candles. I will “need” to come back tomorrow.

  Items of Clothing, Defined

  Pants

  Pants are what you wear on your lower half. They exist only as an indicator of where you are currently located. Pants on? Outside, in the world. Pants off? At your home. Pants half on and half off? Probably, hopefully, in a bathroom. There are multiple subcategories of Pants, including:

  JEANS: Once made of stiff, immovable denim, Jeans are now becoming stretchier and more comfortable. Did you know long, long ago, people used to come home after a long day of work, kick back, relax, and put on Jeans?! Imagine feeling relaxed in a pair of Jeans.

  SWEATPANTS: Sweatpants are one of the few items of clothing that live up to their name. They are called “Sweatpants” because they are Pants and you don’t sweat or do any physical activity in them.

  SHORTS: These are summertime Pants that range in length from Capris to Huh, I Didn’t Know They Made Underwear out of Corduroy.

  LEGGINGS/YOGA PANTS/ATHLEISURE: Wish your Sweatpants showed more of your camel toe? Try Leggings!

  SKIRT: A Skirt is Pants that ripped away from the crotch down each leg. That is the only reason a Skirt would exist. No one would have created them otherwise. The only intentionally made Skirt is a Poodle Skirt. It is a Skirt made for Poodles, by Poodles.

  Shirt

  Shirts, which are essentially Opposite Pants, are categorized by sleeve length.

  T-SHIRT: This is called that because it looks like the letter “T.”

  LONG-SLEEVE TEE: This is like a capital “T-shirt,” in the sense that it looks like the letter “T” received capital punishment that made its top bar get stretched out in opposite directions by horses.

  TANK TOP: This is what you wear when you want everyone to know you have biceps.

  HALTER TOP: This is what you wear when you want everyone to know you have shoulders.

  SPAGHETTI-STRAP TANK TOP: This is what you wear when you want everyone to know you have spaghetti.

  BANDEAU TOP: This is just a headband that got lost.

  You can wear a Shirt on its own or in layers. One Shirt is perfectly acceptable. However, two Shirts can signal a lot about your identity. It can say you’re someone who knows how to use a monkey wrench (a white tee and a flannel) or you’re someone who knows how to use an acoustic guitar (a band tee and a flannel) or you’re someone who doesn’t understand how Shirts work at all (a flannel and another flannel).

  Sweatshirt

  A Sweatshirt, sometimes called a “Hoodie,” is what straight girls wear to signal that they have a boyfriend. You’ll know because they will tell you that this is their boyfriend’s Hoodie and ugh it’s so comfy and smells like him (bad).

  Jacket

  A Jacket is what cool people wear to signify their coolness. It is solely a prop for them to take off, swing over one shoulder, holding on to the collar using one finger, and say, “You new here?”

  Tie

  This is like a pull string for businesspeople. If you pull the Tie, the business person will say things like “Our fourth-quarter earnings are looking good!” and “Synergy!” and “What the hell, stop it, did Janine let you in here?”

  Dress

  A Dress is what happens when a trash bag goes to fashion design school or a potato sack sees The Devil Wears Prada once. It is somehow tight and loose, constricting yet revealing, slutty yet matronly all at the same time. There are different types of Dresses for different types of occasions:

  COCKTAIL DRESS: Any Dress you’ve spilled wine on.

  SUMMER DRESS: A Dress you wear when you want people to think you fuck in a meadow.

  LITTLE BLACK DRESS: A Dress you wear when you want people to think you fuck in a rom-com way.

  EVENING GOWN: A Dress you wear when you want people to think you fuck in a sophisticated way. Pinkies up!

  Overalls

  Always wished you could feel like your shirt and pants were both giving you a wedgie at the same time? Overalls are for you!

  Romper

  Love getting completely naked to pee in public bathrooms? Try a Romper!

  Socks

  Socks are that feeling you get at 2 a.m. when you’re trying to fall asleep and suddenly you are simultaneously so hot and so cold. They are knitted prisons, and nobody knows why they exist.

  Tights/Nylons

  See “Socks” but worse.

  Hat

  This is what you wear instead of developing a personality.

  Scarves

  Similar to a Hat, a Scarf is a substitute for a female character’s backstory in a movie. If the character layers enough Scarves, she eventually becomes a love interest.

  Belt

  This is a Scarf you put in time-out. It has been bad and now it is being punished by having to keep your butt from falling out of your Pants.

  Gloves/Mittens

  Gloves are like a pair of fabric skin for your hands. There is a Glove or Mitten for every occasion!

  WINTER GLOVES: Fuzzy, felt hand skin for the winter!

  BASEBALL MITT: Tough, leather big hand for sport!

  OVEN MITT: Thick, round hand protector for not catching fire!

  WHITE GLOVES (SHORT): If your white gloves stop at your wrist, abracadabra! You’re a magician!

  WHITE GLOVES (LONG): If your white gloves extend up your forearm, ooh, la la! You’re a debutante!

  WHITE GLOVE (WHOLE BODY): Congratulations! You’re the Hamburger Helper mascot!

  Shoes

  Shoes are what complete an outfit. They are also the only part of our clothes we find acceptable to touch the nasty, bad, outside ground. Some people pay upward of $100 for Shoes, a thing you press your entire body weight into and sometimes touches shit that’s not even yours. Shoes can serve as a signature character trait for people of every gender! (Sneaker Guy, High Heel Girl, Tap Dancer, WikiFeet User.) They are also what you put on to make your dog feel excited and then sad and lonely.

  Underwear

  This is the item of clothing you tell all your worst secrets to.

  Bra

  This is what you take off to finally feel free.

  Does This Count as Exercise?

  I drink thirty-two ounces of water by noon. Hydration, I hear, is important if you’re going to work out. In the same amount of time, I have gotten up to pee an estimated forty times. Does this count as exercise?

  I d
rive to the gym. When I get there, I immediately get anxious diarrhea. I spend about as much time in the bathroom as I would have on the treadmill. Does that count as exercise?

  Does it count as exercise if I put on yoga pants to vacuum? What about if I also wear yoga pants while washing dishes? Does the act of wearing yoga pants dub anything I do yoga? If it helps, I do say “Namaste” constantly and with no discretion when I wear them.

  Once, I got a massage—this I know is not an exercise and if it is, something has gone awry—and the masseuse asked what I do to work out. She asked so she would know what muscles to focus on. I answered like she had any actual stake in my fitness regimen. “Uh, I take my dog on walks,” I panicked, leaving out the part where my dog often lies down on the first patch of grass she sees and refuses to get up. (To be fair, it is her punishment for me, a human, for my kind having bred her kind for cuteness and not lung capacity.) “Also, I do Pilates sometimes.” I haven’t done anything remotely resembling Pilates since 2009. I sweat when I lie. So, that makes this whole conversation exercise, right?

  Does hovering over a public toilet count as a squat? Did I work out my glutes if I held in a fart for a long time? Does getting up the nerve to ask the barista for the bathroom code burn any calories?

  I’ve made it through multiple conversations where people, apropos of nothing, tell me about an Asian friend they have or an Asian coworker they know or an Asian person they saw one time at, wow would you believe it, an Asian restaurant. I never scream or even punch them a little. Showing that kind of restraint has got to be exercise.

  I take a nap in a sports bra and wake up in a cold sweat because I had a stress dream about high school. I’m twenty-nine. Have I just done an exercise?

  I feel a sense of physical exhaustion whenever a man tries to get me to watch Lord of the Rings. Do you think that’s because both watching the movie and having that conversation are forms of exercise?

  My heart rate definitely increases every time I think about the scene where Devon Sawa’s Casper turns from cartoon ghost into a human teen boy. Does that make it exercise?

  I get a run in my tights. Have I just done leg day?

  It would definitely count as exercise if someone would make a Map My Run but for my daily mental run through every bad thing I’ve said in the past fifteen years.

  As someone who took actual gymnastics as a child, I can tell you that mental gymnastics requires just as much flexibility and adults yelling at you to TRY HARDER and STOP CRYING ABOUT THE BALANCE BEAM.

  At the end of the day, I lie in bed trying to relax every part of my dense, anxiety ball of a body for once in my life. How do I hold this much tension in my forehead and cheeks?! For the first time all day, my limbs are loose, my shoulders are at ease, and my brain’s only running thought is RELAX RELAX FOR THE LOVE OF GOD RELAX. While this is not exercise, it could maybe pass as meditation . . . which, if you think about it, is a kind of mental workout in itself. Perhaps I have done an exercise after all.

  Part 4

  On Being Horny and in Love and Sometimes Even Both

  These are stories on dating, relationships, fucking, not fucking, cultural sexualization, and, more often, all of those things happening at once. They’re about what’s expected of each party in a heterosexual relationship, how relationships are expected to be heterosexual, how I don’t understand how everyone of every orientation isn’t endlessly and outwardly horny for Michael B. Jordan.

  They’re stories about my misinterpretations of sex, my extremely correct interpretations of sex, and things that are sexual even if they are not meant to be.

  These are stories that you can skip if you are my parents.

  All the Things I Thought Sex Was

  I never got the “sex talk” from my parents. If I did, I must have Eternal Sunshine–ed it out of my brain entirely. Long before sex was a thing I thought about doing, I had a mental catalog of what sex entailed based on things I learned from friends, movies, and the internet. Much to my prepubescent chagrin, that mental catalog was both incomplete and had little to no credibility. In attempts to cite my sources, here are all the things I presumed sex to be.

  Sex has something to do with your fingers.

  I first got the sex talk from a classmate in third grade who demonstrated the act using her hands. “This is what kissing is,” she said, touching the tips of her index fingers together. “This is what sex is,” she said, holding them parallel and pointing opposite directions, rubbing her fingers back and forth, moving each fingertip down to the base of the opposite finger, her expression unchanging.

  I told my parents when I got home from school that day, probably recounting it in the same way I talked about our daily lesson in language arts or social studies. Today, we practiced our times tables, and Catherine P. said that sex is when people kiss privates. In other words, I thought sex was 69ing. I was never assigned a seat next to Catherine P. again.

  Sperm is sexual but in a gross way.

  By the time I reached fifth grade, I knew that sex involved being naked and did not necessarily require mouth-to-peen/vageen contact. (Thanks for nothing, Catherine P.) I was pretty sure it had something to do with vaginas and penises and those things feeling good somehow, but the mechanics of it all were still beyond me.

  During a springtime class picnic—if nothing else, I hope you come away from this knowing that midwestern elementary schools are exactly as quaint and heteronormative as you assume—I sat with a group of girls and ate sandwiches. A glob of mayonnaise dripped out of one girl’s sandwich and fell onto the sidewalk. Everyone started giggling, talking about how gross it was.

  I laughed along like Ew look at that nasty sidewalk mayo yucky ha ha I totally get why we’re laughing like this. One of the girls turned to me and said, “You know what that looks like, right?” I nodded, unconvincingly. My friend Sami, the one who would years later witness me losing the National American Miss Pre-teen Wisconsin title, leaned over to me and whispered, “It looks like sperm.” I did not know what sperm was, let alone what it looked like. However, I thought if it looked anything like the mayonnaise on a sidewalk—it, scientifically, should not—I knew it was disgusting.

  Sex is when girls do body rolls while dancing.

  Like most pre-internet ten-year-olds, I learned a lot about sex from watching Coyote Ugly and Center Stage back-to-back during a sleepover. For me, the sleepover occurred at Brittany S.’s house. Yes, this is the same Brittany S. whose coveted cool girl top led to my mom calling out my armpit hair in the dressing room at Fashion Bug (see page 119). In hindsight, a surprising number of my coming-of-age moments feature Brittany S., someone who I’m sure cannot remember how to spell my last name.

  Getting invited to a sleepover at Brittany S.’s gave me imposter syndrome. No way was I cool enough to have a sleepover at Brittany S.’s, whose parents let her have her own phone in her bedroom. Yeah, right, I’d be allowed to hang out in my cartoon frog–patterned Kohl’s pajamas alongside Kristin A., who wore black plastic choker necklaces every day, and Jamie Z., who’d had full-on boobs since, like, third grade. Being at a sleepover with girls I thought far cooler than me was both my dream heaven and personal anxiety hell.

  After gossiping (!) and calling boys (!!) on the phone (!!!), Brittany said we should watch Coyote Ugly and Center Stage.

  I hadn’t seen either movie before or since that fifth-grade sleepover, but here’s what my ten-year-old brain recorded to memory: girls with flat stomachs wearing halter tops, girls dancing on bars while men cheered, girls in leotards where you can see their nipples poking through and the girls not caring, something about cowboy hats and red mesh fabrics swirling around? To this day, the two movies are linked in my head as one big, horny film about thin, hot women gyrating to pop/rock/country music in bars and at ballet school. In my head, Julia Stiles stars in both movies. She is in neither.

  I told my mom what we’d watched when I got home from the sleepover, probably recounting it in the same way I told h
er about Catherine P.’s sex-ed lesson. Though I’d learned what being horny was from watching it on-screen and, in turn, experiencing it personally, I still hadn’t comprehended the idea of keeping secrets from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to sleep over at Brittany S.’s again.

  Sex is a thing parents do to have a baby and ew, oh my god, did my parents do that???

  When I got my period at age eleven, my mom asked if I “knew what that meant.” To which I was like, Yes for sure duh I know everything I am ELEVEN after all. I remember her asking me to explain to her what I thought sex was. I don’t remember what I told her, but clearly she wasn’t convinced as she responded by handing me a little pink booklet about menstruation and changing bodies. It was, as I’d suspected, the same booklet my mom received in the seventies when she first got her period.

  There were vintage-looking illustrations of a white girl with pigtails staring at her undressed body in the mirror. I flipped to a section in the back that had a calendar titled something like “tracking your cycle,” which is when I promptly closed the tiny book.

  Who cares if “periods = sex.” I have to bleed out my privates AND do homework about it?! No thanks. I’ll pass.

  The phrase “sexy sex-filled breasts” is a real thing that horny people say.

  I spent the next couple of years feeling perpetual waves of horniness and having zero idea what to do about it. I wanted both everyone and no one to know what I knew about sex, which was still relatively little factual information. I had impulses to expend my sexual energy but didn’t really know how other than screaming, “I HAVE SEXUAL ENERGY!!!”

  Once, during this intermittent time, I was hanging outside my family’s house with my siblings and our neighbor, a boy a year older than I was. I had an old dictionary with me in the front yard—very cool and casual, me!—and flipped to the “s” section of the book. I turned to find the page with the word “sex” because I hadn’t ever heard of “subtlety” (that’s a couple of pages later in the dictionary). Making sure I was in earshot of my older neighbor, I loudly sighed and said, “Ugh, it doesn’t even have the good definition.”